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Will Internet Voting Endanger The Secret Ballot?
MIT recently identified the states "at the greatest risk of having their voting process hacked". but added this week that "Maintaining the secrecy of ballots returned via the Internet is 'technologically impossible'..." Long-time Slashdot reader Presto Vivace quotes their article:
That's according to a new report from Verified Voting, a group that advocates for transparency and accuracy in elections. A cornerstone of democracy, the secret ballot guards against voter coercion. But "because of current technical challenges and the unique challenge of running public elections, it is impossible to maintain the separation of voters' identities from their votes when Internet voting is used," concludes the report, which was written in collaboration with the Electronic Privacy Information Center and the anticorruption advocacy group Common Cause.
32 states are already offering some form of online voting, apparently prompting the creation of Verified Voting's new site, SecretBallotAtRisk.org.
32 states are already offering some form of online voting, apparently prompting the creation of Verified Voting's new site, SecretBallotAtRisk.org.
The intent of online voting is two-fold: Allow creation of votes, and correction of incorrect votes. Everything else is smoke and mirrors. The best ballot is one where a physical chain of custody *is* preserved from printing through archival.
Yes.
Computer based voting of any kind is a bad idea.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3_0x6oaDmI
ARE there any other questions?
Why would anyone waste their time voting?
I distrust any blanket assertion that such things are "technologically impossible." I'd agree to "highly improbable", given the ridiculous frequency with which consumers' or citizens' private data is regularly leaked, by corporations and government agencies alike. And given the stupidly insecure and inaccurate electronic voting machines we've seen before, I'd say it's probably "impossible" for some companies to create a secure system.
But properly working, secure authentication and crypto is a thing. It's damned hard to get right, but it's not impossible. At some point, we'll probably figure out how create a system that uses authenticated electronic ledgers to prevent fraudulent tampering (blockchains, etc) while still preserving anonymity. Still, until we figure out how to put such a system in place and make sure it's reasonably secure, paper ballots are at least a bit harder to manipulate on a mass scale, although still not impossible.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
But it will.
Yes, we must make sure that we all vote for the 'correct' party, right comrade?
If a vote is represented by a crytocurrency wallet balance, and votes are randomly distributed to voters via paper wallets(no visible unique markings on the outside of the wallets to independently distinguish them from any other), so long as deposit of wallets can be done anonymously(Tor etc.) then this is a highly secure auditable method of electronic voting.
Electronic voting is one of the most stupid ideas that politicians have croaked up so far. And that means a lot, even after gerrymandering, lobbyism, and two-party-systems.
Electronic voting is basically outright stupid. You cannot control if your vote was really counted, or if it was counted for the correct party or candidate. Votes can be manipulated by inside jobs or hacking, and with a political voting result being a very profitable target, and the voting machines safety and security record far from being unblemished, voting fraud is a very interesting goal for many, not only political, parties.
The problem is that electronic voting cannot fulfill the legal and philosophical demands for a democratic voting. This is not a failure of the planners, programmers, or hardware developers, this is system inherent, as many aspects cannot be implemented correctly without invalidating other important aspects of the same.
Now there is this totally broken idea and they want make it available online, opening the doors to fraud and abuse even wider.
You are completely missing the point. All the cryptography and the blockchains and the secure protocols in the world can not detect if someone is standing behind the computer with a wad of cash (vote buying) or brass knuckles (coercion) and checking that you are voting right.
One of the core features of the secret ballot is the voting booth, where the voter is alone to do the final choice, with official oversight.
Of course, the privacy of the voting booth is not perfect, it is weakened by all sorts of features, from absentee voting to tolerating children in the booth with their parent. But it is still the norm for most voters and is way more solid than a situation where the norm would be to vote from home.
Yes. What is the meaning of life for 1000, Alex.
Ayy, yo. Sup pahtnuh? Ayy yo, you got fiteen dollas you cuh hook me up wit? Fo reals tho, I's fittin ta get sum SMOKE; you fea me, cuh? My boy got sum fotees uh Olde E; we's funna get toe up frum da flo up, you know wut I's sayin? I be heah til twel fiteen, so lemme know wen I cood get dat money you gon gimme.
I thought the sectet ballot problem was the same thing as the "digital cash" problem or the "blind signature" problem, both of which are solved. It basically involves storing a hash or digital signature of the vote along with the vote. That way no one who does not have a voter ID can vote, and the voter can verify their vote was cast, but no one can determine how they voted. This was solved around 2000, and often discussed on Slashdot at the time.
This is actually a good point. Ensuring the correct party and people get into position of power is paramount to the functioning of a nation. The best solution would be to do away with elections because we in this day and age we can't afford to have officials beholden to the whims of public opinion. We need a independent, technocratic elite free of all influences of mob mindset, and with minimum terms to be measured in a decade at least. Seriously, we cannot have policies risking changing every 4 years or stupid decisions undoing decades of effort (see Brexit). The role of the populace is to fuel the state machine, not to make decisions.
I guess they haven't heard of smartcards and public key cryptography. Heck, this would even let voters check and verify the integrity of their past votes without anybody else being able to see them.
-SR
Voting still matters?
When will people learn. Voting for the governor, POTUS, SCROTUS, HOROTUS DOES NOT MATTER.
Lobbyists write the bills, and get the job done.
The only little slips of paper, electornic or otherwise that actually matter, are green, and exchangeable for hard currency.
Want a new law, Lobby for it!
Want a law changed, Lobby for it!
Want more jobs? Lobby for it!
Join a lobbyist group, form a lobbyist group, or better yet, contribute to a lobbyist group.
People can vote all they want, the figurehead changes, the lobbyists get the job done.
yes it will stupid. read up on Tammany Hall in NYC in the 1800's. people were marched to voting booths, overseers made sure they voted for the right people and then they were given gifts. same here. low paid people will be hired or voters will simply have to provide screenshots of their votes to receive prizes
For the first 100 or so years, voting in the US was open ballot. The only reason it changed was because there was a civil war. Corruption and vote fraud was much less with an open ballot, and so long as you aren't in a situation with armed insurrection, is clearly superior to the secret ballot.
Once we go back to open ballots, fraud will drop, and online voting fraud will become irrelevant as well.
Learn to love Alaska
are secret anyway. I had to show them my voter registration card, my picture ID, and from that, they entered something into a computer which spit out a 4 digit number. Then that 4 digit number is used on the voting machines. So they already know that my ID is tied to that number and that number is tied to my votes. There's no secrecy any more.
The day Microsoft creates a product that doesn't suck, it will be known as the Microsoft Vaccuum Cleaner!
The country was founded with open ballots, and they were used up to the Civil War. Open ballots have less fraud than secret ones.
Learn to love Alaska
Why doesn't anyone trot out Betteridge's Law of Headlines when questions like this come up?
#DeleteChrome
Hillary won the primary in States without a paper trail on ballots and lost in states where there is a paper trail. That should tell you all you need to know about the state of the American Election System.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
How about electronic voting, with the caveat 'we can trace your vote'? I don't care who knows how I vote, I'm pretty vocal about it. For those of us that appreciate the convenience, why not make that the option? And for those who want more privacy (which is questionable in a lot of instances anyway), they can go to a booth. Win-win? (And in some ways I prefer the accountability. If I can see that my vote is actually counted, I feel better than doing it in person where it really could disappear..)
There are provably secure cyptographic methods to ensure that no one can figure out who you voted for, and that you can check, after the election, that your vote was counted appropriately. These systems even include a method for providing a faked screenshot to be sold to vote buyers. The fact that almost no one uses these systems is the real problem.
Apparently most commenters here have never actually examined a voting process. Why not try to determine the risks and benefits of the various systems in a "relatively" rational manner. Some simple questions:
What is the error rate rate of the voting system either accidental or deliberate?
Paper ballots can be lost, unreadable and ballot boxes can be stuffed.
Electronic machines can malfunction or contain malicious code.
How difficult and expensive is it to manipulate a voting system and avoid detection?
What is the cost/benefit ratio of reducing the error rate of voting system?
What is the impact of voting systems on turnout?
"It is enough that the people know there was an election. The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything." Internet voting would basically remove the last remaining perception of legitimacy from any of this "democracy" farce that we have in this country. If government counts the votes, government will make sure the "right" candidate wins every time.
One way to do a secret online ballot would be to have each voter attend a place of registration, where their identity is checked before they get to choose one unique voting card from among thousands. Each card contains online voting codes, which could be used for dozens of ballots.
The main problem with this is that it makes vote-selling easier than it is with physical poll attendance.
Remote secret ballots that prevent vote-selling may be impossible, because if you have to verify your identity remotely, there's always the possibility of shenanigans that link this to your subsequent vote, no matter how much the authorities say they are separated.
Must say you are a moron. Voting is meant to be anonymous. Can you Shop anonymously? If you can please let me know how so I can get goods for free.
Open ballots are inherently fraudulent. They exist for the sole purpose of empowering the ruling party to direct violent retaliation against those who voted against them at their whim.
It says that blind ballots guard against voter coercion, but that's not true in the least. What's the one going around these days, vote for Clinton so we don't get Trump, if you vote for Stein or Johnson you're voting for Trump? That's blatant, widespread, constant voter coercion.
At this point I feel like we would be better off making the vote completely transparent. The blind vote isn't helping anyone but the people who would want to rig elections, since there is no way to publicly vet the voting process with it in place.
To endanger the secret ballot so votes can be manipulated.
Really? Noone can figure out who you voted for and you can ensure your vote was counted properly? I thought it was one or the other.
Care to point me in the right direction?
Some people encrypt by using rot-13 twice. I prefer the more secure method of using rot-1 a total of twenty six times.
The role of the populace is to fuel the state machine, not to make decisions.
Precisely! The average individual is far too stupid and ignorant to make their own decisions about matters that can negatively impact the collective in their own lives, never mind major national issues. Collective sharing necessarily requires collective control of the individual and reduction of individual freedom and choice.
Individual freedom was a fine thing back when population densities/numbers were relatively low and technology hadn't advanced to the point where an individual or small group can inflict horrendous destruction and loss of life. With 7B+ world population and still growing combined with the spread of modern technology available to individuals, individual freedom and open societies are an outdated and dangerous concept and practice.
The only way to maintain power and order is through increasing legal/regulatory/criminal/taxation control over the individual coupled with indoctrination/propaganda at all levels of media and education until sufficient control of the populace is established at sustainable levels. Programs promoting and inciting class/race/religious animosities will greatly assist in keeping the population divided and unable to prevent their enslavement to the State and the collective.
Such programs will necessarily begin at the individual national level but must inevitably coalesce under a global governance structure. This is where programs like the TPP are so vital in breaking ground on removing sovereign power of individual nations like the US over their own laws, civil rights protections, etc by allowing laws/regulations/Acts/etc by foreign bodies to take precedence over the US Constitution and US law.
A few generations after global governance is fully instituted and selective breeding, genetic manipulation, and intense indoctrination have had a chance to do their work, people will be unable to even conceive of making their own decisions or even have or understand the concept of individual will or freedom at all. No more wars, vanishingly-little 'crime', no sudden technological capitalism-fueled disruptive explosions surprising society. All carefully controlled, scripted, and planned for maximum efficiency and control by sophisticated government algorithms.
People must inevitably become like cells in the body serving the greater being (the collective) so that humanity can progress past individual existence to become a single advanced being with a single consciousness. At that point we may have advanced enough to think about star travel and colonization in space. However, people must not be allowed even the hope of any avenue to escape control like space colonies until they are rendered incapable of processing the concept of individual freedom, rebellion against authority, or self-determination. This helps prevent the possibility of future rebellions.
A global civilization built upon universal central *control* is the only way humanity will progress.
Be quiet little kid. Adults are talking.
The modern system using one person voting booths distributed around with the ability to have outside supervision that people are really voting by themselves works quite well.
Likewise, marking a paper ballot and using electronic counting gets "auditability of results" and "rapid tally" - a recount is possible if there are questions, but the tallies can be electronically (and vulnerably) done quickly.
The remaining flaw is "access by disabled persons" - if you're blind, it's tough to mark a ballot with a pen - historically, in California, a sworn poll worker would assist the voter who could not get into the polling place, or help a blind person mark the ballot. That's compromisable, clearly, but not surreptitiously on a mass scale - you'd have to suborn hundreds or thousands of poll workers to have a significant effect.
No one should ever know about the ballot. It's not much of a fucking secret if they know about it.
Works in Oregon
I guess you believe Online shopping is even worse?
Voting is absolutely essential to a functioning democracy. Shopping is not. Moreover, the secret ballot is essential to free and fair voting. You're either trolling with that comment or you're an idiot.
Summary of the method: people vote by putting coins in boxes.
I can see a few disadvantages. For starters, it won't work for the vast majority of elections. Elections with only a few candidates are really rare, in most countries, and even for most local governments, people can choose between dozens or even hundreds of candidates. The Robinson method doesn't scale well to these scenarios. Then there's the already mentioned problem that write-ins are no longer private. And I also don't really fancy leaving voters alone with the entire voting record so far without supervision.
Where I live we vote by unfolding the ballot, marking an option, folding the ballot closed again, leaving the booth and dropping the ballot in the box under supervision of a multi-party committee and under full public view. I like this system better than the Robinson Method, because it scales well and it ensures privacy while still allowing the ballot box to be supervised, both by the committee and by the general public, at all times.
Setting aside all the clear fraud, tampering, etc. There is also the possibility of fraud within the household. I can name piles of cultures where the man rules the house; full stop. Immigrants from these countries tend to congregate in communities in many countries. Thus the "man" of the house will do all the voting; can we guess where his voting will lay on the spectrum of women's rights, investigations into honour killings, curtailing of an oppressive religion, etc?
So in addition to all the wonderful possibilities for fraud and rigged elections, there is the simple disenfranchisement of entire groups.
Then we have bully voting. Quite simply an enforcer for some minor gang might show up at an apartment block and tell everyone that they vote in front of him and his men.
The above voting irregularities might not seem like much, except that so many elections are won by a percent or less. In the case of a local councillor or alderman a few hundred votes could easily flip the result of an election.
In a nation with a problem culture like one of the above. This could easily swing an election.
Welcome to the Borg. You will be assimilated.
Tammany Hall was hardly a unique case. The secret ballot wasn't commonplace in the US until the end of the 19th century. Before that, parties often even made sure that the pre-filled ballots had distinct shapes or colours so they could more easily check if the rabble voted the way they should.
Use a gift card and mail to a PO box service that is engaged under a pseudonym and paid for in cash. Gift cards can be purchased at most grocery outlets, again for cash and anonymously. If you are REALLY paranoid use a VM'd OS that you subsequently wipe on your local library Wi-Fi, or at McDonald's or even Starbucks. For the extreme tinfoil helmet, you can buy for cash a very cheap used laptop that you can dispose of AFTER the transaction, preferably in pieces in several different trash bins behind local grocery stores.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
The current systems are inferior in every respect to a relatively simple system based on credit cards with smart chips associated with a voter registration. Anonymity is hardly preserved when doing absentee voting which is widespread. And worse, you can't really verify your vote, unlike an online system. Denial of service is much more likely under the current systems than if we could go online with a credit card to vote and then verify it just like an order on Amazon and like current absentee voting we could vote over a month rather than a few hours. It's trivial to have separate organizations store the database which associates credit card number to voteid number vs. voteid number to vote. Classic separation of duties. Everyone could inexpensively verify their votes. And if there was an issue, they could use an old fashioned in person paper ballot. What about today? Lots of denial of service is entrenched in the system - with inconvenient locations, days of operation, hours. You never know if your vote was really counted and if it was, counted correctly. It takes a long time to count them too. Under the current system, anyone who loses ballots can affect the vote. Anyone who dumps ballots in the bin can never be found out either. You have to ask why there is so much resistance to using modern methods and some pragmatic procedures to just vote online like we order from Amazon. Verifiable, accurate, easy, low cost, hard to hack over a months voting period.
Heck, it can be even better because with postal voting, every mail-carrier can be a man-in-the-middle DOS attacker. "Sorry Mr. Voter, your ballot never arrived, and since the election is over, too bad for you."
At least with online voting you can be assured your unopened ballot actually arrived.
Now, as for all of the OTHER weaknesses of mail-in balloting, including vote-counter fraud, voter-location (spouse/caretaker) fraud, coerced-voting fraud, etc., yes, those are still problems.
Internet voting makes the most sense for people in outer space and others with unreliable or slow paper-mail. It makes some sense for people who can't get to polling places who would use vulnerable vote-by-mail systems anyways. It also makes some sense in states like Oregon which use vote-by-mail exclusively for some elections (but it has the downside risk that it can weaken public support for a return to poll-based voting under the illusion that internet-based voting is as secure as poll-based voting).
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Really? Noone can figure out who you voted for and you can ensure your vote was counted properly? I thought it was one or the other. Care to point me in the right direction?
Most of the voting systems by David Chaum. I assume others' systems as well. All of these systems work by similar methods. One common trick is that if N numbers are XOR'ed together, then any number can only be revealed by again XOR'ing with the other N-1. So your vote can be XOR'ed with something that hides the actual vote, but the combination of the two can be checked from a list. There are other methods as well. I would explain it all, but I am not a cryptographer.
I buy video games from gog.com anonymously using a prepaid card all of the time.
Voting is meant to be anonymous; the process should be comprehensible to anyone, and anyone should be able to contribute to assuring that the ballot count is accurate. Paper based voting meets these requirements, and has the important bonus of being pretty resilient to tampering if enough citizens actually step up and help verify the results. The more you want to fraudulently influence a paper based vote, the more people you need to include in your scheme. Electronic voting on the other hand meets none of these requirements: anonymity is not guaranteed, the process is either sensitive to large scale fraud or hardened against fraud using encryption, making it completely intransparent to laymen. And auditing the count can only be done by experts, and even then fraud is pretty easy to miss.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Laymen cannot audit this system, nor is the process of assuring anonymity and an accurate count transparent or comprehensible to laymen. That means they cannot trust this system... which is kind of an important aspect of a ballot.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Amen.
PS: an improperly fitted lock could let the bomber into the building, and *boom*.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Yeah. Koreans working for a few bucks internet cafes...
You think you can prevent that? With current technology?
All you really have to do is register 500,000 votes in a district with 60,000 registered voters. Invalidate the election. Hilarity ensues.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
The Electoral College serves a specific purpose. If your intent is to stop serving that purpose, be specific, or at least honest.
But do you know the purpose?
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
I think that countries need to switch to an open ballot because of the conflicts between the secret ballot and hybrid direct/representative democratic systems and electronic voting (which thanks to advances in cryptography becomes more viable every day). However the only reason the US didn't have huge trouble with an open ballot was the decreased motive for vote buying, since all voters in that time were white males - and usually from the upper classes at that (during much of that period, the white males also had to own land and/or pass an "intelligence test" and travel in ways that weren't practical for the working class in order to vote). In short, the country club crowd had no reason to pay or coerce each other to vote the way they all wanted. The fledgling democracy would've been clearly identified as an oligopoly by today's standards.
An open ballot being shoehorned into today's world would cause corruption and vote fraud to skyrocket. A switch to an open ballot system, which again I think is a worthwhile pursuit, will need to be accompanied with very strong technical and legal countermeasures to prevent this.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
s/oligopoly/oligarchy/g
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
And in the first 50 years of the USA, when did that happen? Never? Sorry, reality proves you wrong.
Sure, they don't work in places with armed insurrection, but in more stable countries, they work much much better. Or are you asserting that the USA isn't a stable country?
Learn to love Alaska
citation needed
Yes, that's what I asked the AC for. A citation of problems with open ballots in the USA. None were provided.
Learn to love Alaska
Laymen cannot audit this system, nor is the process of assuring anonymity and an accurate count transparent or comprehensible to laymen. That means they cannot trust this system... which is kind of an important aspect of a ballot.
In California I make inkspots on a piece of paper, then it is fed into a big machine. I get s sticker that says, "I voted!" Is that better?
Laymen cannot build a modern car or airplane or understand how it works, which means they cannot trust this system...
Same goes for the power grid, and the Internet, and pharmaceuticals.
Sooner or later, we're going to have to trust the concept of trusting a reputation based web of trust. We can't personally understand MOST of the technology that supports our modern lives.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
It's that simple. Just a No.
The moment there is even a possibility for a vote to be monitored and/or identified, you have a broken system.
The moment there is even a possibility for a vote to be tampered with, there is no vote.
Voting hinges on the anonymity of the caster, and the transparency and trust in the process. Electronic voting, either on machines or on the internet gives you neither.
No one's mentioned Estonia yet, so here we go: http://www.vvk.ee/voting-metho...: secret ballot over the Internet, separation of voter and vote, vote verification, and last but not least, open-sourced voting software. Researchers have pointed out a few hypothetical attack vectors available to state-level entities (last from 2014) which have been closed ever since, but the bigger problem is actually handling the PR during the elections, in the sense that a malicious person or persons can claim their votes were "hacked", drum up the media coverage, and even though they'll be proved wrong, the integrity of the ongoing elections would still be compromised.
What you're missing, I believe, is that the authentication is required at a certain time, and the anonymity is required at a different, later time. Thus the two can be achieved with a clever enough crypto protocol. The intervening time (casting the ballot: that is, marking the answers, and the transformation of the authenticated right to author those ballot answers into the anonymized record of the ballot answers) can be managed using a secure session.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
So first we have to achieve effective freedom from systematic oppression, then we can have Internet voting.
The first one sounds like a pretty good goal anyway. And I think we're a long way along that road in liberal democracies.
What are we, some kind of tin-pot dictatorship with goons running around corralling people? I haven't seen that in my town for a while.
This whole "you will be co-erced into voting on command" thing strikes me as treating the adult population as if we were all helpless children.
I don't buy it.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
You're not well-acquainted with human history, are you? The reason that voting is setup this way is precisely because all those things you poo-poo as not being realistic actually happened. Not in the hyperbolic forms you state, but in effect. Vote buying. Intimidation. These are real problems, and you don't realize it because you've only ever voted while the solutions have been in place.
Laymen cannot build a modern car or airplane or understand how it works, which means they cannot trust this system...
That's irrelevant. The interests of the people who build the cars are aligned with those of the people who use them, and if that proves not to be the case then there are liability laws that ensure that you can be compensated if your car is not built to spec. In contrast, the interests of small subsets of the population are typically not directly aligned with the rest when choosing a government.
In the UK, our elections run by putting a cross on a piece of paper, which then goes into a box. The boxes are taken to a central location for each constituency and are then counted. If I don't trust the system, then I can watch the box from the time that I cast my vote until it gets to the polling station and can then watch the votes being taken from the box and put into piles and counted. The same is true for almost any member of the electorate. In contrast, with an electronic voting system the number of people who are able to verify it is tiny: I have a PhD in Computer Science and work in computer security and I wouldn't be confident that I could spot hidden manipulation of an electronic election and I doubt that there are more than 100 people in the world who could - if that. Do you trust those 100 people to decide who wins the next election? Remember what Stalin said: it doesn't matter who casts the votes, only who counts them.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
I don't want my vote to be anonymous. The fraud at the ballot box is out of hand in the US, similar to that of many "third world" countries. With the new digital age the opportunities for fraud have been magnified to an incredible degree with the ability to change or eliminate thousands of votes electronically. I think if you want an anonymous vote you should be able to vote on paper and if not then a verifiable digital vote. Leave the option to the voter. I'll vote online only if it's not anonymous. One thing, no fucking chads.
if it doesn't exist.
It was protected by the hassle of getting the manual voter sign in systems into a computer.
Plus the hassle of scanning the paper ballots.
Now that's moving to computer without the Internet.
So even manual voters are not private if somebody wants to know.
This, plus the ability of the software in some brain dead voting systems to 'adjust' the tally without getting caught are a sad state of affairs.
I wonder if it would be possible to come up with an open source voting system and set of procedures which actually work?
I would give up anonymous voting if it meant I could trust my vote couldn't be manipulated in secret.
Though I do understand the implications of it as some countries in the past have used such systems to remove potential competition to their own party.
The way I see it, if they're going to cheat to win, may as well make it as difficult and time consuming as possible for them.
A quote from Joseph Stalin: "I care not who runs for election. All I care about is who counts the votes."
Isn't that all that really matters to certain people? All they care about is who gets the victory. Whether they actually won isn't the point. In their opinion, too much money (and power) is at stake to leave it to voters. I think that is why the electronic voting machines we presently have were put in. Of course, the reason given was that they would get rid of "hanging chads" and make it fairer, but the real reason was the opposite. And no one is allowed to see how the inside of these machines work because that would "lessen security."
The same 'special' people will only agree to internet voting if they can have full control over the design of the system and are able to take it further. Instead of merely controlling who wins, they will want to know who voted against them. Anonymity will be gone. Also, it will be easier to add millions of votes at a central location with the press of a key. On one will know. They won't have to work in separate locations or drive around to wirelessly connect with the machines to make adjustments.
The present system is bad enough. Personally, I figure if ABC, NBC, MSNBC, or any of those guys eventually say it is a good idea and will help people or make something more fair, it is more accurate to believe the opposite. So far, I haven't heard that in this case. But it is not a serious enough proposal yet.
I think if you want an anonymous vote you should be able to vote on paper and if not then a verifiable digital vote. Leave the option to the voter.
Leaving the option to the voter is the same as leaving it to vote buyers and coercers.
One thing, no fucking chads.
Like Internet voting is the only solution to hanging chads. Guess what, in France we use paper and never had and never will get hanging chads!
For the first 100 or so years, voting in the US was open ballot. The only reason it changed was because there was a civil war. Corruption and vote fraud was much less with an open ballot, and so long as you aren't in a situation with armed insurrection, is clearly superior to the secret ballot.
Chile also had open ballots and was not in a state of civil war or armed insurrection. Yet, as soon as they switched to secret ballots the election results changed significantly.
You're forgetting whole cultures and communities where women don't have equal rights (no matter what the law says), and employers who have the will and the means to try and nudge the balance.
Anonymous voting is pretty important, but I'll join you in the concern that I've got no way to go back and make sure my vote was properly recorded despite the problems that causes for anonymous voting.
There are other methods as well. I would explain it all, but I am not a cryptographer.
And that is the problem. To actually verify that these systems work as they claim you need PhD in cryptography which means 99.99% of the voters are left out in the cold. Plus having a working theory is one thing, letting voters make sure on election day that the implementation is not buggy and does not leak your votes to third-parties via a side-channel is another entirely.
Laymen cannot build a modern car or airplane or understand how it works, which means they cannot trust this system...
If cars or airplanes of a specific make keep crashing laymen are going to know pretty quick and will buy from its competitors. Same thing for the power grid, and the Internet, and pharmaceuticals.
But if done well, laymen would not know that the election was stolen. And it's not like you can go to the competition. Not only has the government a monopoly on elections, you cannot even escape whatever decisions it takes (no moving abroad is a not an option for most people).
Use a gift card and mail to a PO box service that is engaged under a pseudonym and paid for in cash.
Of course the whole "Internet voting equals Internet buying" analogy is fatally flawed. That's because the store does not care who you are as long as you pay so it's willing to accept a gift card you bought anonymously. In contrast the government wants to restrict voting rights to its constituency so it will never let you vote without first providing some form of identification.
I think David Chaum solved this a decade ago.
And so Estonia's solution where people can vote online but override their vote on election day by casting a vote in person isn't a solution why? And that's just one of many possible technical solutions.
And the current practice of mail voting doesn't already eliminate ballot secrecy why?
"99 dead duelists of Dios on the wall. 99 dead duelists of Dios! Take one's ring, pass it around..."
First of, electronic voting is a horrendously stupid idea. There's no need for it at all (we've had working paper votes for ages) and even if I could prove to experts the system is temper resistant, there's no way average-joe or my grandma could actually verify that. (OTOH, she can simply watch the paper counts).
But it's not so much "the secret ballot" that's at risk. Of course, current implementations are stupid, but maybe they could find something workable. But voting online will always be subject to coercion, just the same way as mail-voting is. The only way to guarantee that your employer/husband/... doesn't force you to vote a certain way is if you have to vote in a voting booth in a public place.
Just a little research into who Verified Voting is and what they stand for reveals that they are a group who benefit from the way things are now, battling to maintain the status quo. They stand actively opposed to any online voting system, regardless of its properties, and technically they oppose any system which introduces any kind of real verifiability to voting. They promote the secret ballot as an end to itself rather than its original purpose as a means to secure voter privacy, and leverage it to prohibit any kind of verifiability (checking that MY vote was recorded correctly and included in the final tally) citing the paper tiger of voter coercion, though no one seems to be able to point to voter coercion happening in real life or provide information on how prevalent it is, or whether the current system encourages it more or less than modernized voting systems.
The simple reality is that it's laughably easy to coerce a voter today, as a coercer knows exactly when and where a voter will be voting, and if he can force the voter to vote a particular way, he can also force the voter to provide evidence of it. Compare this with an online voting system with math-based (as opposed to trusted secret keeper based) anonymity and a transparent ballot box on a blockchain, such as the one under development at https://followmyvote.com/, which allows the voter to cast their vote from anywhere, on their own device, and change it later if they so choose before the polls close. This requires a coercer to be virtually omnipotent in order to coerce a vote and prevent it from being changed to the voter's original preference after the danger passes.
Yet Verified Voting still stands opposed to such systems merely on the basis that they break the most restrictive form of the secret ballot (that ballots have no uniquely identifying markers or serial numbers) by allowing voters to verify the integrity of the votes while still protecting voter privacy. The secret ballot is not a desirable goal in and of itself, it is merely an innovation to protect voter privacy in paper-based voting systems. Those who oppose modernized voting systems solely on the grounds of the secret ballot are likely either confusing the secret ballot protocol with the privacy it was invented to protect, or they are actively opposed to voting systems being verifiable (and ask yourself what people might be opposed to this, then look at who runs Verified Voting).
A better organization to listen to would be CAVO, which exists to support the development and deployment of open source voting systems.
In my state we use mail in ballots.
In some countries everyone in the country votes including tourists, at least when I was a youth.
Secret ballot is fairly recent and used "first" in australia. Hee. Which is why it is called the Australia's ballot.
You can switch your MAC address randomly fairly easy.
You could give to me a printout of how I voted and a hash. Then publicize all the hash with the votes for each hash. And use commodity hardware erc.
Now not so long ago, the different parties would preprint your ballot for you. Different colors. Visible logos. Goons at the ballot box. Better not try to vote the wrong colored ballot. Indeed we had small civil wars over control of the voting site with dozens dead. Hmm. Catholics vs baptist and methodists is one i remember reading about.
You still need to give an address.... how hard is it to track down the purchaser if you have a physical address?
P.O. Box? Just find out who owns it or stake out the location and wait for the pick up.
My eyes reflect the stars and a smile lights up my face.
Voting is meant to be anonymous.
Yeah, but is it really anonymous? Most states require a government issued ID in order to vote. The second that ID comes out into open air, you have to assume that all of the information on it has been given up.
At best, I would say that our current process is semi-anonymous. Given enough effort, your vote can be deduced.
I am personally all for online voting. The reason is just this: The more people that are able to vote, the more democratic the system.
I think that REASONABLE anonymity can be achieved through the use of TOR and other means. Hell, if you don't want to allow just any computer, make bank ATM's a valid voting station.
My eyes reflect the stars and a smile lights up my face.
It would be known that the election will take place sometime this month.
But there would be a series of randomly timed, short 15 minute windows, announced via voting app notification, during which you can cast your vote with your smartphone or computer (requires fingerprint and face scan and secret knowledge to authenticate).
So you have to be being shadowed all the time, so that the vote coercer can be sure to catch you when the voting opportunity comes up.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
The fraud at the ballot box is out of hand in the US, similar to that of many "third world" countries.
Citation please. I agree that Voter ID might be useful, but I have yet to see credible evidence of enough voter fraud to sway any US election held in the last 20 years. IMO The logistics of in person voter fraud make it very difficult to materially affect a large election. NOW, computer fraud or dishonest vote counters is another matter entirely but not something Voter ID would fix.
Anonymous voting helps prevent vote buying and voter intimidation. If the buyer or intimidater cannot confirm you voted the way they want what is the point?
Secret ballot is assured in public unwatched (once you enter the curtained room - none can see how you vote) polling stations. It is not assured with an online login and vote, where threats an/or $$ can be used to witness how you vote under others eyes say at a workplace where the boss sees how every wirker votes and those that complain - just keep walking as you look for a new job.
Never in America you say? No, it is ever ready to pounce and coerce workers.
How can math ensure that nobody is looking over my shoulder when I vote? How can math ensure that my electronic vote isn't reconstructable from memory or physical side effects?
Blockchain technology is anonymous and secure. And you cant double spend a bitcoin.
Voting should be done using a permanent, re-countable record (i.e. paper), in person, and behind a curtain. Computers should never be used vote. You might use them to count votes recorded on paper, but the paper should always be available for quality checks and recounts. Absentee ballots should only be permitted for military or diplomatic personnel, or those with a certified inability to reach the polls. (i.e. note from a doctor.)
Gee, I fill out a paper ballot and put it into an electronic counting machine. If there's reason to suspect problems, or if the vote is really close, "they" will count all the paper ballots. The sealed ballot boxes will be handled well, with any opportunity for fraud observed by (at least) representatives of the two major parties. I'm pretty sure it's going to be counted correctly.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
To file an absentee ballot in this state, you fill out your ballot and put it in a blank envelope. You put that one in a larger envelope with your name on it, and mail that in a larger envelope.
When the ballot is received, someone files the envelopes with names on them. Someone keeps track of the envelopes until it's sure that the ballot is the right one for that person. Then people open the envelopes with names and throw the blank envelopes inside into a container, and when they're through they'll get the blank envelopes and get the ballots out. The fact that you voted on an absentee ballot is on record, just like it's on record that I voted at my precinct polling place. There's no way to connect a ballot with a voter.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Is your piece of paper kept so that it can be counted again in case of problems? If so, that's a lot better than any purely electronic voting system.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
I did (nearly) everything you said already. And it Did Not work.
ebay would not allow the Visa gift card to be accepted until I attached my address to the card through the visa site. The visa site would not allow me to register on this site through an obscured IP.
It is my belief that you cannot purchase online in a private manner without committing fraud. Not because privacy requires fraud, but simply because companies make money from your lack of privacy. For example, you said that I should used a pseudonym for my PO box. I think that counts as fraud in my neighbourhood.
You're missing the point. The complaint about electronic voting is that someone can compel someone to vote in a particular way when voting isn't in person because they can confirm that the vote was cast in the way that they want, which they can't do at a polling place. But this situation already exists with absentee ballots, when the person is filling out the ballot.
Meanwhile, in Estonian online voting, when you vote online, you can still later go to a polling place and change your vote. Meaning that the person who watched you vote a certain way online still has no clue whether that vote is actually going to be the final say, unless they hold you hostage all of voting day. Which someone could do with likely voters for a given candidate whether online voting exists or not.
This has nothing to do with whether people at the electoral commission can match voters with their votes (which they can't do with either paper or online votes in any decent system).
"99 dead duelists of Dios on the wall. 99 dead duelists of Dios! Take one's ring, pass it around..."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
A global civilization built upon universal central *control* is the only way humanity will progress.
The problem with this sort of stuff, is that the people saying it always think that they are part of the elite. In History, it does not seem to work out that way. Instead they end up part of the fertilizer... 8-{